The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-12-28

practically cover all political refugees from
Russia to the United States, for they have all
participated in some movement, conspiracy or
| league for the overthrow Of the government
Are the American people prepared to take that
positionP Most emphatically, Itwould be a
complete surrender of all our claims as the asy-
lum of the oppressed, and cowardly concession
to the most absolute despotism in Europe, if
not in the world. While such treaty would
be practically useless to it would be an
added engine of oppression and weapon of
terrorism to the already overstocked armory
of the Car. Mr.. Bayard would place the
President of the United States and the Gar
on the same footing, and thereby degrade the
elected chief magistrate of a free people to
the political level of a ruler who owes his po-
sition and his continuance of it to a system
Of absolute and all-pervading terrorism. For,
in Russia, the least vestige of free government
and personal liberty is obliterated. In the
eloquent language of Wendell Phillips Sin
Russia there is press no debate. no expla-
nation Of what government does. no remon-
STRANGE allowed, no agitation of public issues.
Dead silence, like that which reigns at the
summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole en-
pire, long ago described as "a despotism tenn
pered by assassination Meanwhile, such
despotism has unsettled the brains of the
ruling race, as unbridled power doubtless
made some of the twelve Caesars insane-a
mailman, sporting with the lives and comfort
of hundred millions of men. The young
girl whispers in her mothers ear under a
ceiled roof, her pity for brother knouted
and dragged half dead into exile for his opin-
ions. The next week she is stripped naked
and logged to death in the public square. No
inquiry, no explanation, trial. no protest;
one dead uniform silence, the law of the ty-
rant"
The New York Times puts the case almost
as strongly when it says
eff Americans could imagine their country
ruled by centralized and brutal despotism,
with its seat in New York; if they could con-
celve of this great community without free
dom of the press, without impartial courts,
with no laws that could be even known, much
less appealed to with any hope of justice; if
every man and woman in this city who dared
to have, or was suspected of having. any SEN
timent but one of blind and dumb submission
to this revolving system could feel that they
might any night be seized and sent to i'm
prisonment or to slow death in the mines of
Alaska, without their nearest friends knowing
their fate, except by their disappearance, and
if to divert the indignation such outrages
aroused. the country might be plunged into
war with the nations on our border; if Amer
leans could realize what life would be under
these conditions, they could form some idea
of what it is in Russia"
Between such government and that of
the United States there cannot, and ought
not to be anything in common regarding the
treatment of so-called political offenders. We
are taught from infancy that Resistance to
tyrants is obedience to God" If that is true,
then rebellion against the government of the
Gar is patriotic duty, and the Russian who
seeks refuge in the United States from pun
ishment for that offense should be harbored
and defended, not surrendered The terms
of the proposed Bayard treaty are far more
favorable to Russia than she has been able to
secure from any European power. It would
be amazing, indeed, if the freest government
in the world, under so-called Democratic"
administration, should voluntarily make it
self the instrument of the Gar for capturing
and returning his hunted subjects. It is to
be hoped, for the honor of the American
name, that this treaty will be rejected by the
Senate.